Love for God
The breath of the Beloved
Is a paintbrush in the hand of my heart
Always rearranging
The table where love sits
Calling like the open space
Of a pure white canvas
Calls to the painter
Take me; take it all
Practicing devotion requires that we have a Beloved. That is, God in a personal form that is capable of receiving our devotion. A Beloved that is aware of our efforts and gives love, grace and compassion back to us as a willful act.
Many people have difficulty accepting that there is such a God. Some are able to go so far as to accept an underlying energy or the endless space of awareness, but to say that it is an organized and intelligent energy capable of personal communication is out of reach. This is regrettable but certainly understandable. The author was once an atheist and the story of his metamorphosis can be read in the autobiographical book Into the Mystic which is available at www.devipress.com.
Especially in western cultures, the intellect is regarded as the highest good. We think the intellect is our ticket to not only survival but a comfortable life. It buys food, pays the bills, invents new drugs and puts men on the moon. In this sense, the intellect is a wonderful computer. However, it is quite blind and incapable of any creative genesis. It is not capable of providing happiness and, in fact, when it is allowed to steer our ship, yields mostly suffering. For happiness – true lasting happiness – the heart must be in command of our ship. By “heart” we do not mean mere emotion but rather the core of our being which radiates light, love and bliss.
In our journey from infant to adult, the heart is ignored and it remains undeveloped; we have no sense of it – no connection or awareness of it. We are taught to do math and diagram sentences but nobody teaches us how to feel the sublime and subtle inner worlds of Being. For most of us the heart is the unwanted child that we keep locked in the dark space underneath the stairs. This is unfortunate because it is only through the heart that we may come face to face with God and dwell in the light of Supreme Love. God must first be felt in order to be seen.
Recent scientific research has demonstrated that the heart neuro-complex in the center of the chest is more cognizant than the brain with the heart sending far more information to the brain than the brain sends to the heart (www.heartmath.com).
“There is a light that shines beyond the world, beyond everything, beyond all, beyond the highest heaven. This is the light that shines within your heart.”— Upanishads
We have a cosmic wire, more like a spoke from a hub, that comes from the universe that is plugged in at the point of the heart in the center of the chest. It is through this portal that we access God and God communicates with us. The spoke comes up from the center of being and not through time and space. At the very center, we are all connected – everything is one being. At the center of being is The Beloved radiating out into all that exists for all eternity. This is the mechanism of devotion.
In Hindu yogic texts, the heart is regarded as being the seat of the soul. In the system of Jewish mysticism known as Kabbalah, the center of the Tree of Life is associated with the place of the heart. The Islamic mystics, the Sufis, have the concept of Sirr and describe it as the secret innermost heart of hearts where Allah reveals His mystery to Himself. In Catholicism, we have the concept of the Sacred Heart.
If we lack faith in a Beloved that is more than formless energy, we can somewhat reason our way to the portal of faith. It goes like this:
The entire sum of existence is a conscious, living being with a cosmic mind. We are made in the image of that or we could say we are a reflection of that. The universe is the body of God. At the core of being, and in the center of our own hearts, God is the eternal sun of consciousness (formless) which harbors light, life and love (form) for eternity. Thus every human, animal, plant, stone and atom has its existence in this flow of primordial energy and information.
The Hindu Vedas state that everything in the universe is ripples and waves appearing on the ocean of consciousness. If we can accept this to be a plausible explanation, then we can accept that something is alive, call it a cosmic mind, that is continually creating and destroying all forms of matter and energy. This is done willfully and with intelligence the same as if one would write a symphony and then conduct the playing of it.
This willful intelligence is evident if we examine Nature closely. The detail of circumstances in the human body alone, that allow legions of cells to live and work at different tasks, is mind numbing. And this is only one tiny speck. There is cohesion and harmony in atoms, molecules, weather, the solar system and in the functioning of the sun and galaxies. Everywhere we look we see incredible and vast details that dovetail perfectly. Even a single cell in a blade of grass is astonishingly complex. To think this all occurred by accident or by chance is more incredible and incomprehensible than to believe a mind was behind it all. In fact, the design we see and the interconnectedness of it all is mind! Only a person who has never studied Nature would assign the design to the trash bin of random chance. And it’s not static – it’s all moving! Why does it not all collide and collapse? What is directing and orchestrating this constant movement?
"I see the Lord in His universe," the Master said, "Viewing a beautiful tree, my heart is moved and whispers: 'He is there!' I bow to adore Him. Doesn't He permeate every atom of the earth? Could our planet exist at all except by the cohesive power of God? When we see Him in all persons, in all things; each rock becomes an altar." Paramahamsa Yogananda
Beyond the design, where did all this come from? It could not come from nothing. Zero plus zero or zero times zero is always zero. We might consider that form (the design of matter and energy that is the universe) is eternally existing. Thus the universe was never created because it always has been. The Hindu Vedas describe a process of birth and death for the universe. When the universe is dissolved in the cosmic dissolution, another one is born. It expands and then begins to contract until it too dissolves and yet another universe is born. This has been occurring for eternity and will never cease. Thus there was no original creation.
Adi Shankara, (circa 800 CE) states in his treatise The Crest Jewel of Discrimination that the universe (as form – as matter and energy) is eternal. While being credited with being the father of modern non-dual (jnana) philosophy, he was also a bhakta and worshiped God in the form of the Divine Mother. From this way of looking, the universe was never created – it always has been. The universe is the body of God and it is designed and orchestrated by this cosmic mind.
This same cosmic mind that is God, is capable of communicating with each of us on a very personal level. God is continuously communicating so much information to us now from the center of being and up through the heart. Every cell in our body contains all the genes necessary to be any type of cell. To be a liver cell, certain genes step to the front of the stage and bone cell genes recede into a dormant state. Modern science is baffled as to how each cell knows what to become. The answer is that God is continuously communicating with every cell. As previously stated, this communication comes from within us, from the core of all being, and manifests through the portal of the heart. The entire universe is centrally managed. Every atom, every particle floats in this stream of life that comes from within and does not have to travel through time and space. This communication is instantaneous. In this way, God can and will talk to us, love us and care for us. To say that this is not possible is to limit the limitless.
To practice devotion, it is most desirable to pick a form. God will appear to us in whatever form we are most drawn to. This could also be a physical incarnation of God such as Jesus, Amma or Krishna or one’s guru provided the guru is a satguru - one who has merged permanently in the Divine.
Not only is the nature of God love, but God is love.
God is love. 1 John 4:8 and 4:16
Where there is love, there Bhagavan (God) is. Amma, Awaken Children, vol. 1
If you focus your mind on me and revere me with all your heart, you will surely come to me; this I promise, because I love you. Krishna, Bhagavad Gita, 18:65
The path of love and devotion is the easiest, safest and most expedient path to the Divine.
The fact that the entire universe is alive as a singular living, loving intelligent being - a Divine Intelligence, a Divine Person if you will - that can and will communicate with us and that the very nature of this Divine Person is love, can be borne out by direct experience. One must proceed on faith at first but God will come if we call Him with love and longing. He must – it’s His nature!
